


like a bridge over troubled water

by avoidfilledwithcelluloid



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Buncha Trans Babies, F/M, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Support Group Nonsense, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 12:59:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4523040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidfilledwithcelluloid/pseuds/avoidfilledwithcelluloid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Um,” Mulder says, gesturing to themselves, “I’m a six foot trans boy who still has tits and hips. I don’t need to cram a fucking cookie down my pants to be a spectacle. My body does that for me.”</p>
<p>Dana Scully and Fox Mulder meet at a trans support group, eat cookies in the back and find they are not alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a bridge over troubled water

**Author's Note:**

> this is for murphy, who cried and has been waiting for me to write a full on x files fic for months. it is also for me because i wanted to write these characters into my own experiences. the title, which is so cheesy and over used as a title that i too am cringing along with you reader, is from simon and garfunkel's "bridge over troubled water". anyway. 
> 
> as usual, i hope you like this story. i am always writing it with you in mind.

A rough and ugly wind is blowing the community college flyer board to the left. Dana puts her hand on the pink paper she’s been staring at for ten minutes and tries to look occupied, focused. Oftentimes in the rush of the college’s hallways she feels infinitesimal against the broadness of the older students who are all there to get their degrees. Unlike Dana who only comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays for her English college credit class.

Taking her hand off, she imagines the writing as bigger than it really is. A billboard that screams: “TRANS SUPPORT GROUP MEETINGS AT 9 ON WEDNESDAY IN ROOM 180. REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.”

Dana starts to chew on her bottom lip. A person taller than her brushes past, catching her on the elbow and knocking her back away from the bulletin board. Instead of falling she catches herself and her attention doesn’t waver. Her backpack is sagging on one shoulder. It’s so heavy.

She reaches out and rips the paper down. With precise hands, she folds it up and puts it in her pocket. Dana begins to make a plan.

…

The weather outside is bad, like ‘you’ll catch a damn cold in that weather Dana wear your jacket’ sort of weather. Before she leaves the house Melissa sneaks heating packets into Dana’s pockets. She gives her hand a squeeze as Dana climbs out the window of their one story house.

“I’ll tell them you went to catch fireflies,” Melissa says. Dana scrunches up her face.

“Uh,” she says, tapping her foot against the ground to reassure herself of a safe landing, “They’re not supposed to think I’m _you._ They just need to think I’m in bed.”

“Don’t stress,” Melissa waves her hand dismissively, peace symbol bracelet clacking together with the movement, “I’ll come up with a good lie. I always do.”

“Thanks,” Dana drops with a thump and both girls look sharply toward the bedroom door. They stay very still until a few seconds pass with no knock and then Dana’s off. She shuffles her backpack over one shoulder. Inside she’s got a writing pad to take notes, a case of gel pens and her sister’s copy of _A Passage to India_ in case she gets totally bored.

Walking bites the big one but she can’t get to her bike without opening the garage. It’s too loud and too risky. The back of her shoes rubs against her Achilles’ tendon and when she finally reaches the community college where the meeting is held she’s hopping on one leg trying to pull her sock back up. Without looking where she’s going Dana rams head first into someone’s chest.

“Oh Jesus,” they huff out, stumbling backward, “What the hell?”

“Oh,” Dana looks up. In front of her is a gangly mass of limbs wearing a dirty sweatshirt with a rumpled collar sticking out of the top. They have on jeans worn at the knees, a beat up pair of Adidas and a pin with an alien head stuck on their collar. She sticks out her hand, “Sorry. I’m Dana Scully.”

They shake their head, trying to reorient themselves, and take her hand in a rough shake.

“Mulder,” they say, “Fox Mulder. Uh. Most people call me—“

“Spooky!” Dana says and then shuts her mouth from embarrassment, “Oh. Sorry, sorry. I just think that we go to school together? Mr. Tooms’ third period history class?”

“Yeah,” Mulder shrugs, “I usually sit in the back.”

“I guess I never really see you then.”

“No,” they shake their head and laugh: a short detersive sound, “I’m mostly known by reputation and not sight.”

“Well,” Dana smiles, “I see you now.”

This gets her a small uptick of the lip from Mulder and they gesture that it’s okay for her to walk in with them. The way they automatically assumes they’re the leader rubs her wrong but she does want company. Dana puts her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and crunches the heating packets until they spark warm in her palms. It’s harder than she thinks to catchup with Mulder. Their legs make longer strides than hers do.

Inside the building is a small class room where someone has shoved all the desks to the walls and put fold out chairs into a circle. There was a card table near the whiteboard with a Costco plastic box of cookies and a coffee dispenser holding cups in a side rack. Mulder makes a bee line for the cookies, pulling up the sides of their sweatshirt with how they’re stuffing cookies in their pockets. Dana puts her hand on his wrist.

“What are you doing?” she hisses.

“Its fine,” Mulder says, stuffing a sugar cookie in their back pocket, “They don’t mind if you take a lot.”

“You should still,” Dana frowns and reaches around Mulder to grab one of the Styrofoam coffee cups, “You could stand to be a little less of a spectacle.”

“Um,” Mulder says, gesturing to themselves, “I’m a six foot trans boy who still has tits and hips. I don’t need to cram a fucking cookie down my pants to be a spectacle. My body does that for me.”

“Well,” Dana presses the knob on the dispenser down, searching the table for cream and sugar, “If you want to play that card.”

“Oh shut up,” Mulder shoves Dana with his hip. A few people behind them are grumbling. Dana glances back and finds that it is more than a few people.

“We’re holding up the line,” she says and scoots away from the table. Mulder snorts but follows her to a set of folding chairs that are a little further from the circle. Fingers tips still sort of cold, Dana rubs the hot cup between her hands back forth. Nervous, she takes in the rest of the people coming in. They are all so much older than her and they all look so good. They all seem to pass effortlessly. A little part of her flares up with insecurity about the way her skirt doesn’t quite hide her knees or the way her shirt stretches a little too tight across her chest. Her brain tries to stamp it out but it loses itself amongst her other feelings.

Mulder taps her shoulder and he’s holding out a crumbling chocolate chip cookie to her.

“You didn’t get one,” he says when she takes it from him with a question mark on her face, “Can I have some of your coffee?”

She passes it to him. He slurps it which makes her skin crawl but the annoyance dies down once she takes a bite out of the cookie. It’s sort of crunchy, which is how she likes them, and there’s something that makes food taste better when someone else gives it to her. Mulder makes a face when he gives her the coffee back.

“Gross,” he says, “Its black coffee. You didn’t put anything in it?”

“I was in a hurry.”

“But you didn’t need to be,” he says with a thin whine cutting through his voice, “Whatever. It’s too late. We’re going to have to suffer in silence.”

“I’ve only know you for a few minutes and I doubt you could ever suffer anything in silence,” Dana says and takes a sip from the cup. Her lips twist. Oh god, it is gross. She takes another sip however just to be contrary to Mulder, “Are there usually this many people?”

“Uh, I think. I haven’t come that many times,” Mulder leans back in his chair, “I don’t usually have free nights.”

“Are you working?”

“No,” Mulder says and for the first time that night he looks a little embarrassed, “My friends and I are part of a club and we’re usually, like, doing club projects most nights. Except for tonight because one of the guys had to go on vacation with his family and the other guys wanted to play this new online game. So I thought I’d get some free cookies and coffee at the college.”

“Oh,” Dana thinks about the texts on her phone that have gone unanswered, “That’s cool. What’s your club about?”

Mulder shifts in his chair and points to the pin near his collar.

“Aliens,” he says. His face is straight forward but his eyes keep darting over to see her reaction.

“Wow,” Dana says and keeps her face down toward her coffee cup. She has to bite her bottom lip to keep from laughing. Mulder coughs while a couple people brush past them. Dana can feel them staring. She throws her hand to the back of her neck where her hair feels choppy and uneven. The touch of her fingers against her neck unguarded by hair makes her skin crawl.

“Are you itchy?” Mulder asks and when she looks at him he gestures to her hair, “You were messing with it so I thought maybe—“

“No, no,” Dana says, “Um, my mom made me get a haircut pretty recently. I’m trying to grow it out but right now it looks pretty—“

“It looks nice,” Mulder interrupts her. There’s nothing on his face to suggest he’s anything but serious, “Your hair is really nice. I like how red it is.”

“Thanks,” Dana’s shoulders relax, “So you are in an alien club?”

“Yeah,” Mulder says, “It’s sort of my thing. You know, being Spooky and all.”

“Oh yeah,” Dana put her cup down on the floor, “Look, I’m sorry I brought that nickname up. It’s just, I don’t know, what I knew you by.”

“It’s okay,” he doesn’t stop looking at her, “I am pretty spooky.”

In the circle someone shuffles some papers and announces that the meeting is started. Without a word Mulder starts to push his chair back away from the circle. The moderator is a tall bald guy in oval shaped glasses who doesn’t say anything when Dana scoots back with Mulder but she can tell he sees them. Mulder settles into his seat about a foot from the group and the way his face glows when he sees Dana coming back makes her stomach feel like it’s full of tiny frogs jumping around. Frogs make her think of when she and her brothers used to find toads on the military base and chase Melissa around with them trying to make her kiss their slimy lips.

_What a mean bunch of kids_ , she thinks.

“So this part is usually like an hour,” Mulder whispers when she sits next to him, “Skinner is pretty cool with me not talking as long as, like, at the end I talk to him about home stuff.”

“Oh yeah?” Dana picks at a hang nail trying to seem like she’s not feeling anxiety like a hailstorm against her brain, “You out to your family?”

“Are you kidding?” Mulder shakes his head, “No. My sister, uh, my younger sister went missing like two years ago. My parents are still broken up about it. I— I’m still broken up about it.”

He went quiet, flicking crumbs off the front of his sweatshirt. Dana wants to put her hand over his just to steady the way his fingers kept fidgeting. The feeling is a bright and new one.

“They just have a lot to deal with,” he continues, “I don’t want to make them deal with this too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Dana sits up a little straighter and puts her hands under her thighs. Mulder rummages in his left pocket and starts eating another cookie.

“I came out to my parents,” she says and kicks her legs out, skidding her shoes along the linoleum, “But they were pretty mad about it.”

“I heard that happens,” Mulder says and then clarifies, “One of my buddies, uh, he’s a club member and he told his mom he was trans. She blew a gasket and he had to stay at my house for a little bit. But she’s okay about it now. I don’t know. People are sort of weird about that stuff.”

“My dad,” Dana catches her bottom lip between her teeth. She doesn’t want to say anything. Talking about her dad still feels like she’s betraying him, “Um, he just didn’t take it well. And my mom just sort of pretends nothing changed. But my sister was really cool about it. She lets me use a lot of her clothes. I mean I buy my own too but it’s so awkward. It feels like everyone is staring at you.”

“Yeah?” Mulder looks up and down at her outfit, “Yours or hers?”

“Mine,” Dana runs her hand down her skirt, “We don’t really share the same style. She’s more, uh, bohemian. I like neat stuff. Clean lines.”

“Looks like it,” Mulder snorts, “I just sort of grab whatever fits at the Goodwill. It’s pretty easy to get under my parent’s radar with clothes. Most of the time they just call me a tomboy. It’s shitty but like—“

“You do what you can,” Dana says and Mulder nods in agreement. He offers her another cookie but she holds up her still unfinished chocolate chip as a refusal.

Everyone in the circle is watching a guy cry. He’s holding his face in his hands and sobbing something fierce. Dana wonders what he’s talking about. She hears whiffs of his story through the mucus and tears. He says something about getting kicked out. Or maybe he said he was left out. She can’t understand much from where she’s sitting.

Mulder rubs his eyes and makes a grumbling noise.

“This guy always cries,” he says not really modulating his voice. The moderator gives him a sharp look which Mulder returns with a sort of half shrug like he doesn’t care, “Ugh. Skinner keeps trying to make eye contact with me. He doesn’t like it when I talk about the other people.”

“Well I’m sure they didn’t come here to get judged by the teenager in the back,” Dana says and Mulder rolls his eyes, “Seriously. Why are you doing that?”

“It’s just all so,” Mulder throws his hand up, “so weird and serious all the time. No one sees how absurd all of our situations are. They just want to live in their own Lifetime movie. I mean, the other day somebody called me a dyke. I got called a slur and it wasn’t even _the right slur._ But this guy keeps coming and telling the same story and crying the same tears. He won’t see the irony. He just sees the slur.”

“Why can’t you have both?” Dana asks, “I mean, it’s kind of frustrating to feel like the world’s longest joke is being played on you.”

Mulder folds his arms over his chest.

“I just don’t understand,” he says, “What’s the point of telling your sob story? I don’t want other people to pity me. For fuck’s sake, I just want them to call me a boy.”

“You know, you’re kind of being a jerk,” Dana says, “You can’t judge people sharing when you won’t do it yourself. It’s not fair.”

Mulder’s limbs go tight. He grumbles something and then, sighing loudly, scoots his chair up to the group. Everyone’s heads turn straight to him. Dana feels her face getting hot in sympathy. Mulder doesn’t shrink from their stares. With his chin tilted out like a defiant six year old, he raises his hand.

“Yes Fox?” Skinner says with a mix of surprise and frustration.

“I want to share,” he says, “with the group.”

…

The group wraps up at the hour mark like Mulder had said it would. Dana picks her nails. There’s crumbs caught under them. When she glances up Mulder is still sitting in his seat talking to Skinner who, hands on his hips, looks fond in a way that makes Dana feel at ease. He has the presence of a good washing machine: comforting and reliable. Mulder keeps fidgeting with his pockets.

Dana starts tapping her foot loudly on the floor. Mulder jerks his head back toward her then says something to Skinner. When he walks back to her Dana stares resolutely at her nails. Mulder nudges her foot with his shoe.

“Hey,” he says and she looks up. Mulder’s got a blank expression on, hands shoved in his pockets, “So how was your first time?”

“I think I could handle doing this again,” Dana says and then, “Why’d you go up there? I mean, you said before that, uh, that you didn’t have to.”

Mulder mumbles something to his chest.

“What?” Dana leans closer and Mulder gives her a pained expression. He twists his torso back and forth, trying not to look her in the eye.

“I didn’t want you to think,” he clears his throat, “that I was a jerk.”

“Oh,” Dana laughs, “I shouldn’t have said that. It was, well, it was sort of rude to just say that to you. I barely even know you.”

“No, no,” Mulder waves his hands wildly, “I am a jerk. I just wanted to be, uh, less of a jerk.”

He rubs the back of his neck.

“I guess that’s what I’m saying,” he says and then holds out his hand for Dana to take, “You want someone to walk home with?”

Dana tells Mulder about a short cut they can take through the college’s baseball field. He gives her a boost and then attempts to throw his own gangly limbs over the fence. With one leg over the fence, he tips and falls down on the grass. When he rolls over there’s a small tear on his sweatshirt.

“Ugh,” he squeezes his eyes shut, “I am felled Scully.”

“Come on,” she drags him up, “Your bruised ego shouldn’t weigh you down too much.”

As they walk on the crisp dew strewn grass the stars pass them across the dark autumn sky. Mulder sticks his finger in the hole made on his sweatshirt. He corrects his stride when it gets too long for her. Something winding and warm grows in her stomach.

“Do you want to hear something wild?” Mulder says as he climbs over the fence on the other side. Dana nods and holds her hand out to help him down, “I know who took my sister.”

“Really?” Dana looks out at the sidewalk up ahead. From here she can see the rise of the military base where her dad is working late and she knows that close to the base is their house. And she is only so many miles away that she wishes were bigger and longer miles than conceivable.

“Yeah, but you’re going to laugh at me,” Mulder starts down the sidewalk, “Actually. Nevermind. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s okay,” Dana says, “You can tell me.”

“You won’t believe me.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t hear you,” Dana says and Mulder sighs. He gestures at the sky.

“I think she was abducted,” he says and he speaks so soft that Dana almost misses his words, “I remember when she disappeared. It was this huge bright light that entered our living room and she was screaming. I was trying to get my dad’s gun but then I fell over. I couldn’t do anything. The things that took her, Scully, they didn’t look human. They didn’t look real.”

He takes a long, drawn out pause and then, in a small voice, says,

“I couldn’t save her.”

Dana rubs her hands together. It’s too cold outside. She should have listened to Melissa about wearing gloves. When she breathes the air is white and holds its shape for a mere swallow of seconds.

“It’s not your fault,” she says and Mulder rolls his eyes, “It really isn’t. Does it matter if it was aliens or people who took your sister? No, it doesn’t. People get lost all the time. There’s nothing to provide explanation for it.”

“But I _can_ ,” Mulder says with an insistant tone, “You don’t get it! That’s why me and my friends, that’s why we started the club. Explanations are out there. We just have to look hard enough.”

“All that looking,” Dana says, “what do you get? Obviously not aliens or somebody would have heard about it by now.”

“We get the truth,” Mulder’s fists clench, “but nobody’s interested in the truth.”

They stand outside of Dana’s house. Melissa has her lamp light on in the corner bedroom and it fills the window with a gold light. Mulder looks at the house like he can see inside it and Dana can believe that he is seeing right through the flimsy walls of on base housing.

“I guess I’ll see you in school,” he says and when Dana offers her hand he shakes it. Then, like he’s been building up the courage, he blurts out, “You could join my club, you know, if you wanted to.”

“What?” Dana says at first, “Oh. Uh, I don’t even know where you live.”

“Oh I’m a few blocks from here,” Mulder says and points to the west, “I’m like the house with the Ford Taurus. I can write down the address and give it to you at school if you want.”

There is a quality of hope to his face that shines along his eyes and mouth. The lamp light in the window flickers. It’s getting too late for her to be out.

“I, uh,” she says and then, more resolutely, “Yes. I would love that.”

Mulder grins: a split open expression of joy across his face.

“Great,” he says and then, “Okay! I better go. My parents are expecting me back. They think I’m bowling with my friend Frohike. I’ll see you in school.”

Dana opens her mouth to say something about him getting home safe but she’s caught in the wind of him jogging off. The stars look bright and far off over his back.

_You are not alone,_ she thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> do you like the cries of a kid who loves dana scully more than they can contain? maybe you like pictures of ufos? follow me for this and more at my [tumblr](http://avoidfilledwithcelluloid.tumblr.com/).


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